Chat apps blamed for rising divorce rate in China

SHANGHAI — When one of China’s biggest celebrities — Chinese Olympic hurdling star Liu Xiang — recently announced on Weibo that he was divorcing actress Ge Tian after just nine months, his account lit up with crying face emojis, recycled rumors that Ge had faked a pregnancy to get married, and jokes about a controversial scene in a recent World War II television drama in which she pulled a grenade from her crotch.

"Liu Xiang must be tired, always having to defuse bombs!" one commentator wrote.

Celebrity divorce is evidently just as salacious in China as it is in the U.S., and judging from the cynical comments on Liu’s Weibo page, the concept of divorce itself is becoming just as accepted.

This is a worrying trend for the government. Last year, there was one divorce for every four new marriages. While the divorce rate in China is still relatively low, it’s been on the rise for 12 consecutive years. (In the U.S., the divorce rate is actually declining.)

Some blame the stress of the gaokao — China’s notoriously taxing national university entrance exam — for breaking up families. Others point to the rise in fake divorces to avoid paying higher taxes when couples sell a second home. (Couples often remarry after the house is sold — a plot for future Chinese rom-coms, for sure.)

The number of divorces in China

Image: China Ministry of Civil Affairs

In the southern city of Guangzhou, it’s the heat. According to the Guangzhou Daily, there’s been a run on divorces in the steamy start to summer — so much so that officials put a moratorium on new filings in one district until Aug. 9 due to lack of manpower. "The weather is hot, it’s easy for people to get irritated," a social worker in Guangzhou’s marriage office explained. "Monday and Tuesday is the peak for divorces because lots of couples quarrel over the weekend."

But experts believe there is something far more insidious wrecking Chinese marriages: social media. Married men and women in China are increasingly using the popular messaging service WeChat and the social networking and dating app Momo to have affairs, according to a recent report in the Chinese magazine Banyuetan.

Banyuetan magazine: 'Why has the divorce rate increased 10 times?'

The number of men using these apps to contact mistresses (known as xiao san in Chinese, or "little thirds") has jumped by 20% in the past few years, the magazine reported.

Wang Jun, a counselor at Beijing Weiqing Marriage Consultants, tells Mashable that many of her male clients come to marriage counseling sessions with smashed mobile phones. Fearing their extramarital affairs would be discovered, the men have destroyed their phones to hide messages from their "little thirds."

"Husbands lose contact with their families while texting their mistresses through WeChat or QQ (another messaging service) every day, even in front of their wives, she said. "This problem is so serious that almost every affair has a connection with a mobile phone."

The Banyuetan report prompted much hand-wringing in the state-run media about the state of marriage in China but not everyone agreed social media was to blame.

"The rise in the divorce rate, as a social phenomenon, has been caused by humans, not electronic tools," a report in China National Radio stated. "Young people today are more self-centered than their predecessors and averse to compromises in conjugal life."

The Beijing News, meanwhile, lamented the only thing that kills marriage is "loss of love." If a marriage is happy, it will not cause loneliness," the newspaper said. "If anything, the popularity of social media is partly the result of unhappy marriages."

A couple in Shanghai ignore each other to check their phones

Wang acknowledges there are a host of reasons for the rising divorce rate, from the pressure Chinese men feel to provide their wives with material things like houses and cars to the higher expectations women have for a fairytale romance.

But even among her clients who aren’t having affairs, social media is a recurring theme. "Almost everyone complains about the time his or her spouse spends on social media," Wang says.

"When they get divorced and look back on what they have done, they realize it was the computer with whom they spent most of their time."

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